SolarCity Corp (SCTY) acquires Common Assets for individuals and small businesses to invest in solar panels

SolarCity Corp (NASDAQ:SCTY) has acquired Common Assets, a company that has developed software that allows individuals and small businesses to invest in solar panel projects. Generally, large banks and institutional investors were the only ones that could invest in solar project funds. SolarCity is responsible for around a third of all new solar panel projects being built on home rooftops in the U.S.

SolarCity will be launching a new investing website for individuals and companies soon. This platform would be different from other crowd funding websites because they will use debt investments instead of aggregating investments for providing loans for projects.

Common Assets CEO Tim Newell and Chief Architect John Witchel will be joining the SolarCity board of directors. Witchel served as the co-founder and CTO of Prosper, a crowd-funding loan platform. Before Common Assets launched, companies and individuals had to fund solar panel rooftop systems with up-front cash, which would cost between $25,000 and $40,000.

“Previously only institutional investors could participate in the financing of most solar assets. With our investment platform, we’re hoping to allow far more individuals and smaller organizations to participate in the transformation to a cleaner, more distributed infrastructure,” stated SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive.

SolarCity is a solar panel company that went public in December 12. The CEO of the company is Lyndon Rive and the chairman is Tesla Motors/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Some of SolarCity’s other recent acquisitions included Paramount Solar and Zep Solar.